Lessons learned from the previous newsletter - PrzywodztwowIT.pl

Hey,

I'm writing this after more than a year of silence on PrzywodzwtwowIT.pl. I owe you an explanation.

When I launched the newsletter Przywództwo w IT, I wanted to share my experience with engineering leaders in the Polish IT industry. I sent my stories and pieces of advice every few weeks to newsletter subscribers. I really enjoyed it, both writing and coming back to my posts. But after a few months, this project failed.

Here I wanted to tell you what happened and what lessons it taught me.

1. I spent too much time on details - from the landing page to newsletter structure, to picking the right picture and probably 1000 other things that distracted me from the most important - sharing the content, which helps leaders to grow.
2. I wrote in Polish. It's funny - even though Polish is my mother tongue, I don't write in it as fluently as I do in English. Each post I wrote took me ages. I had so many thoughts to share, yet I spent long hours structuring, fighting with grammar, etc.
3. Interestingly, feedback from readers was that... they wanted me to write in English. 😊
4. Content was private - people needed to sign it, and it was hard to discover the page. I wanted to inspire people, but it cost you too much even to find articles I shared.
5. The sending cycle needed to be shorter. A new message every five weeks was a bad idea for building community and engagement. The project was forgotten, both by the readers and me.

I took these lessons seriously and came back with Practical Engineering Management. I share my content as often as possible (short bits - Leadership One-bites, a few times a week; longer ones in the form of blog posts, a few times a month).

The content is not closed anymore - the newsletter is just to summarize, but everything I publish is available for everyone. I write in English to ensure my materials are available as widely as possible (also on Medium, Twitter, and LinkedIn). And I decided to keep the UI/UX of Practical Engineering Management as simple as possible. Thanks to the feedback, I know what you value the most - the experience and lessons I share. So that 80% of my focus goes to that.

Finally, next to my bits of advice, I also share backstage of the PEM project. Its mission, the strategy (soon), and metrics I use. I want you to see some of my experiences and skills in practice, so it's all available for you.

I hope this is enough to stay with me. I allowed myself to import a mailing list from PrzywodztwowIT.pl to Practical Engineering Management.

Let's stay in touch,
Mirek